“These are the gods who have been forgotten, and now they might as well be dead. They are gone. All gone…. Even their names have been forgotten. Gods die and when they die, they are unmourned and unremembered.
“Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed in the end.”

So, let us remember, can people. Many a woman has died at a god’s decree; many a man too. They have been known to use us as pawns, and there is a game to end all games afoot here, before the lights finally go out.

First of three books – each containing nine sequential-art chapters – in which Gaiman elaborates on an element which he first explored during his epic SANDMAN mythology: that of faith, and the dwindling of gods’ power if followers fall by the wayside. If ancient gods are no longer believed in or worshipped, what power have they left?

And how did they come to America at all from lands so far away? Each was carried in the hearts and minds of immigrants, and mortals have been landing on America’s shores long before Christopher Columbus mistakenly believed he’d reached the Indies. Which gods of many faiths you will meet under most unexpected circumstances, I shall not say, for half the fun is in spotting them, but there are history lessons aplenty interjected – along with rude discoveries – and both Colleen Doran and Glenn Fabry have produced my favourite art of their substantial careers for these brief interludes.

The former illuminates the tumultuous history of one resourceful Essie Tregowan who once worked as a scullery maid on the shores of Cornwall and whose days ended – after many marriages, children and much meandering, up-and-down fortune – on the other side of the Atlantic. She never forgot the Piskies and the Spriggans, she always paid tribute, and it seems they never forgot Essie. Doran’s lines are as delicate as her softly lit colours, and her knowledge of historical fashion in hair and costume spot-on.

In a more modern setting, poor Salim is dispatched by his brother-in-law from Oman to cold New York City in order to sell cheap copper trinkets from a suitcase. His meetings with business owners are wholly unsuccessful and his funds, like his spirits, drain away until he strays into a taxi whose driver displays certain attributes which Salim finds fearfully familiar. Adam Brown’s colours on Glenn Fabry’s line art are quite extraordinary: I’ve never seen rain on a windscreen in a neon-lit city quite like it.

For these acts of worship in storytelling, story-spreading, acknowledgement and sexual congress, the gods will show their… gratitude? … to differing degrees and in many different ways. Top tip: I’d probably avoid reading this on public transport, though, for my own adjoining seat wasn’t empty.

So we come to the central narrative. It’s so long since I read Gaiman’s AMERICAN GODS prose novel that much of this came as a pleasant surprise: it was like being reacquainted with an old friend who was as charming and witty as ever yet – thanks to P. Craig Russell on crystal clear layouts and Scott Hampton on hyper-real art – had grown even more handsome in the interim.

It also triggered recollections of further down this long and winding road which reminded me that – as any SANDMAN reader knows – Neil Gaiman is a master of foreshadowing. P. Craig Russell, whose exceptional adaptations to comics include Wagner’s RING OF THE NIBELUNG and THE FAIRY TALES OF OSCAR WILDE is no slouch on the foreshadowing front, either, and has distilled Gaiman’s prose to its vital essence while retaining so much of the original words’ key cadence, along with ideas like this which would be much missed had they ended up on the cutting room floor:

“The short service ended. The people went away. Shadow did not leave. There was something he wanted to say to Laura, and he was prepared to wait until he knew what it was.”

As to structure, sleight-of-hand stepping stones are one of Neil Gaiman’s fortes. I’ve spoken of this at least twice before in HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES and THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE wherein Neil’s stories begin grounded firmly in our shared reality but then his protagonists pass over a subtle, metaphorical bridge – or some sequestered, sun-dappled stepping stones – into another. It’s as though a rarely spotted signpost has popped up, redirecting you down a road less travelled, a side-path to somewhere else, somewhere other.

This is why Hampton’s hyper-real yet not-real art works so well from the start, for Mr Wednesday’s ever so many sleights of hand have already begun from the get-go. It is Shadow’s path that we follow, and it has an eerie, distanced quality to it, the protagonists not quite inhabiting their landscapes which, as you see, have a mutable quality to them anyway. Shadow has so little control over his environment, his circumstances or indeed his entire trajectory, and this will prove all the more disconcerting to someone who considers himself a pragmatist.

“Shadow had done three years in prison.
“He was big enough and looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time.
“So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife…
“He did not awake in prison with a feeling of dread; he was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring because yesterday had brought it.”

Instead he keeps himself to himself and marks the days off on a certain calendar until he will see his wife once again. During these three years of calm incarceration Shadow’s cellmate, Low Key Lyesmith, introduced him to Herodotus’ ‘Histories’ (circa 425 B.C.) and the self-professed reluctant reader became hooked. What happened to Lyesmith? Transferred without warning, apparently; vanished into thin air.

“Shadow did not believe in anything he could not see.
“Still, he could feel disaster hovering in those final weeks, just as he had felt it in the days before the robbery. He was more paranoid than usual, and in prison, usual is very, and is a survival skill.”

With five days to go before his release, after a collect-call to his beaming wife who enthuses about the last leaves of autumn, Shadow is warned of an approaching storm: something cataclysmic waiting outside. There’s no audible thunder in the figurative air but then lightning strikes: Shadow is told that although he was due to be released on Friday… he will in fact be released a whole two days early. His wife has been killed in a car accident.

In an instant everything Shadow had mapped out for himself after his three years in prison is gone. He still has a future but it is empty, unfurnished, unforeseeable and so unimaginable. Numb, he boards the bus to the airport, then his plane home, but home is not what he thought it would be. Shadow falls asleep in the storm.

“Where am I?”
“In the earth and under the earth. You are where the forgotten wait. If you are to survive, you must believe.”
“Believe what? What should I believe?”
“Everything.”

When he dozes once again he is back in prison.

“Someone has put out a contract on your life.”

Then when he wakes up, Shadow’s nightmare begins.

I don’t know about you, but I am constantly lost, late and disorientated in my dreams. But that is now Shadow’s reality. He’s at the wrong airport: the plane was redirected because of the storm. He misses its replacement; the next one is cancelled; but if he’s quick there is one he can catch.

“Shadow felt like a pea being flicked between three cups.”

And that’s precisely what he is. Now, following the death of his wife, his early release, the redirected plane, the plane that he missed, the one that was cancelled and the seat which taken, Shadow is finally where he needs to be. Well, he’s where Mr. Wednesday needs him to be: right across the aisle.

“You’re late.”
“Sorry?”
“I said… you’re late.”

For someone inhabiting this Age of Information, Mr Wednesday is far from forthcoming, but he’s on a mission and to fulfil that mission they must journey across America, gathering allies as they go. It is of course Shadow who will attract the one-eyed man’s enemies, receiving forewarning not from Mr Wednesday but from others who crossed their path.

“You’re walking on gallows ground, and there’s a hempen rope around your neck and a raven-bird on each shoulder waiting for your eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretches from Heaven to Hell, and our world is only the branch from which the rope is swinging.”

Over and again, Shadow will receive visitors – mostly late at night – and some are more welcome than others. Animals and birds may not be quite what they seem, but then, are they ever? Names will have meaning, coins will gain currency and promises will hold power. Beware whom you worship.

“Now there are new gods in America: gods of credit cards, of internet and telephone and beeper. Proud gods, puffed up with their own newness and importance. They are aware of us and they fear us, and they hate us. They will destroy us if they can.”

I’m sure you’ve gathered by now from all the references who and what Mr Wednesday is.

What luxurious forms, deliciously drawn, delicately poised, full of innocence, joy and mutual, unequivocal adoration. Eyes fixed on each other – except when closed whilst kissing – the couple’s arms are entwined as the many years roll by, the bingo sheets passing like the pages of a calendar.

I love the cover’s narrative: hair greys, fashions change, but not their love for, nor loyalty to each other. Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray, two women of colour, and eventually of some considerable age, able to share their affection and relish their relationship, free from outside adversity and —

If only.

I’m afraid the real world has a habit of intruding and it does so, dramatically, inside. But don’t give up hope, for hope this has in abundance. Whatever hostilities Hazel and Mari may face, I promise you that the cover doesn’t lie.

We begin in 2033 with a young girl kicked out by her parents simply because she is gay. If you think it’s disheartening that this would still happen in 2033, yes, it is. But I’d remind you that racism remains rife even though the Civil Rights Movement (detailed in the MARCH trilogy and THE SILENCE OF OUR FRIENDS) kicked off long before the Gay Rights Movement, and progress unfortunately isn’t a one-way street, as evidenced in America today under racist hate-enabler President Donald Trump.

Aaaanyway, the good news is that the girl is comforted by an elderly lady who recalls her own childhood back in 1963 when a younger Hazel Johnson first spotted, at church bingo, a girl who also turns up at school. It is, of course, Mari McCray, newly moved to this more conservative area from California, bursting with an energy that has her stretching her arms and an exuberance which Hazel finds immediately infectious.

“Mari was on my mind for the rest of the day.
“We didn’t have any other classes together so I kept replaying our interactions over and over in my head.”

That’s ever so true! The feeling that someone is so close that they could be glimpsed at any sense, yearning for such another meeting, yet frustrated by incompatible timetables and a big crowd. Instead you are indeed left to replay the last encounter in search of signs and nuances that you’d made a new friend.

Franklin is forever presenting us what is familiar. Here comes another instance, after the pair has bonded over hot chocolate, an instinct for generosity, and a new nickname offered with affection which helps cement any new friendship with its personal, private stamp. Over the following, St-Onge provides us with a montage of further shared endearments as Mari and Hazel root for each other, dance with each other, play each other their favourite songs and sympathise when spice in the food proves too hot.

“From that first hot chocolate, Mari and I were best friends.
“My mother used to say we were joined at the hip.
“Between school and sports, we spent every moment we could together.
“We really loved each other as friends…
“But I wanted something more.
“I wrestled with my feelings for Mari for years. Was it worth ruining our friendship if she didn’t feel the same way?”

So there you go: the terrible dilemma which faces so many of us who establish a friendship first, then worry about the risk when you don’t know if someone wants something which you do, too.

There’s so much which is wonderfully universal about this love story.

In multiple ways it reminds me of Jade Sarson’s equally embracing, era-spanning, gorgeous graphic novel, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MARIE. That one’s 16+ with discretion, but there’s nothing here that should signify that BINGO LOVE isn’t for all. It’s not preachy; it’s kind and the celebrations, once they start, will induce big, beaming smiles galore.

Its colours by Joy San are as rich and warm inside as they are on cover and I know that I’ve a habit of harping on about hair, but St-Onge for me is right up there with Emma Vieceli, Kyle Baker et al. Hazel’s young, star-struck wide eyes also put me in mind of Sophie Campbell. My favourite bits, however, were the little fingers clasping each other, sometimes in sight, sometimes not.

Representation is important in its own right, as Chris Roberson makes so eloquently clear in his foreward to THE SECRET LOVES OF GEEKS because “people find it easier to become who they are when they see themselves reflected in media and stories”. If you’ve experienced a lifetime of seeing yourselves reflected in media and stories, then this may not occur to you. And, hey, good for you too!

But there isn’t enough old age in comics, for a start, and I’m getting on.

Having exhausted my musings on the craft of these two crazies – and the ever-so-clever conceit of interviewing reanimated corpses with modern-day irreverence rather than simply dishing out lacklustre history lessons – I’m going to resort this time to succinct bullet points in the hope of satisfying those with Attention Deficit Disorder (which is basically the entire human race in this multi-channel / internet age), then I’m going to have me some fun with Princess Caraboo’s interactive exercise on creating your own real-life fictional character. It’s not as much of a paradox as it may sound.

But first, the bullet points:

The cartooning is exquisite. Just glance at Adam Murphy’s puckered mouth and eyebrows, and those hands, hands, hands, bringing so much to gesticulatory life during the talking heads sequences!

Each page contains even more unnecessary alliteration than my longest-lasting reviews.*

* An independent analysts protests

These books are 100% historically and scientifically accurate, packed with hard facts which you could honestly pass exams on. (Caveat: apart from the bit about Adam ever interviewing a single one of these spectral specimens, let alone any lesser-known cadavers for pastime pleasure. Oh, and Granny Nanny’s precise details on buggering up the Jamaican slave trade which were passed down through the oral traditional – bit more of a mythology, that, but she sure showed the culprits what’s what. Princess Pocahontas’ legend will come into a much needed de-Disneyfication, though!)

They are laugh-out-loud funny with anachronistic banter from the bone idols (“Not chuffing likely!”) and puns galore including ‘The Sails of the Century’ and ‘A Killer Look’.

This collection of overwhelmingly new material also reprints the Queen Elizabeth pages from CORPSE TALK II which were so rip-roaringly brilliant that I spent the entire first half of that review fixated upon them, especially the double-spread ‘A Killer Look’ because OMG but Queen Bess didn’t do herself any favours whatsoever when it came to keeping young with cosmetics!

Here’s Adam introducing Queen Bess:

“This week, one of history’s feistiest fighting females! It’s the Tudor Tigress, the lean, mean Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I!
“Elizabeth, you might be the world record holder for the most insane family drama of all time!”

Our corpse-questioning host then catalogues what probably is “the most insane family drama of all time” by hailing two Marys (sister and cousin), a furious father bent on beheading (Henry VIII: amongst those on the chopping block, Liz’s own mum), family fights over the throne, further bumpings-off and finally Philip II of Spain, former husband to her dead sister, asking for Betty’s hand in marriage, then not taking rejection too well. Most young men would have slunk off sheepishly and ordered in pizza. Philip II ordered out the Spanish bloody Armada! Elizabeth:

“First we blasted them with cannons! Then we sailed shops of fire into them! Then God got in on the action, and stormed them to death! Don’t mess with The Bess – she gon’ open up a can of whoop-ass!”
“Aw yeah!”

You may have noticed that I haven’t quite grasped the concept of “bullet points”.

So we finally return to Princess Caraboo (1791-1864) who appeared penniless on the doorstep of one Mrs Worral, the local magistrate’s wife in the sleepy Gloucester village of Almondsbury which was about to wake up to its newly arrived, exotic occupant.

Princess Caraboo hailed from they knew not where, to begin with, for she knew not one word of the English language, and so they could not converse. She could mime. She could dance, in an Indian continent way. And she could speak in some foreign tongue which no one could identify until one bright spark suggested the language of Malay and offered to translate. Then they learned of her capture by pirates from the remote Island of Javasu, her bitter ordeals at their hands and her eventual escape, overboard, when Britain’s shores were in sight. Oh, how she was paraded and celebrated throughout England’s High Society, this regal, oriental princess!

In actual fact, she was a serving maid from Devon called Mary Baker.

All power to her! England 1791-1864: not much chance of a legal leg-up on the social or employment ladder for a woman, as Jane Austen’s tale will make clear. Socio-political context is ever so important in examining either history or literature, and the four-page condensation of ‘Pride And Prejudice’ (which is a triumph of salient points and satire) kicks off with just such a reminder.

So what is my point and where am I going to have some fun? As I’ve mentioned, each of these trailblazer’s tales is followed by a double-page diagrammatical spread whereon we are privileged to witness the extent of their legacy, the science or boat-building skills behind their stories, the details behind the slave-saving underground railroads (no trains, train times or consequent delays involved, how to dance the Charleston as performed, step by step, by none other than Josephine Baker, plus the extraordinary revelation that is the Golden Ratio found throughout nature and denoted by the Greek letter Phi. I actually think that Adam and Lisa did a better job of explaining that than Terry Moore did in his tension-drenched ECHO.

The ‘Brief History Of Women’s Rights’ timeline is given a full six pages, which is only right given the subject of this volume and the appalling length of time it took for women to actually achieve some.

And so at last to the fun!

Following Princess Caraboo’s wool-over-eyes antics, Lisa and Adam forsake their customary post-mortem spread for an interactive opportunity to hone your own lying skills, and to create your own real-life counterfeit / deceit with the help of some very silly suggestions from themselves.

Before that, however, ‘Try Writing Down Your Translations For These Common Words’

Hello: Monaye!I’m hungry: Give’till monayeThank you: Multi monaye!

Good-bye: TheresaGood-bye forever: Theresa-May

There’s plenty more, but you get the idea, and I’m sure you can do better!

The Pond (£11-99, Graffeg) by Nicola Davies & Cathy Fisher.

He can foresee their shared joy in the nature and teeming wildlife which they will attract to their new pond once it is built, and he inspires them with his enthusiasm.

It’s so very good to have a project!

“There will be tadpoles,” he said, “and dragonflies.”
Mum told him that our garden was too tiny and my brother said that ponds were gross and stinky.
Dad took no notice.
He just smiled and whispered,
“Wait until you see the water lilies!”

And yes, you just wait!

“Dad never got his tadpoles of his dragonflies.
“He died and left a muddy, messy hole that filled our garden.
“Dead leaves blew in, tin cans, all sorts of rubblish.
“Ugly weeds grew tall.
“We all stared out at it: the muddy, messy hole that filled our hearts.”

I’m sorry to do this to you yet again but, just as with the same creators’ PERFECT, Nicola Davies and Cathy Fisher have something important to say – this time about bereavement – and they do so honestly and eloquently.

Kindness and communication is everything, and so often our young ones don’t know where to start. And it is so very important to start, otherwise they (or we) are left lost and alone, with no one to talk to about what is a very bewildering experience, violent in its finality.

Adults find it difficult enough to talk about bereavement when they have years of experience with which to make a good go of it. We have a certain sense of context, at least. Children don’t.

We all need a way of seeing through abysmal loss to some form of future that will shine the light back into our lives without feeling disloyal: something to carry us through, like a promise to ourselves and to those we still miss. We need a way to honour their memory and so carry it forward in order that they will never, ever be forgotten.

“Just you wait until you see the water lilies.”

So yes, just you wait! They’ll be here.

As improbably as last time with PERFECT, Davies and Fisher have united to synthesise a pictorial story which openly owns to the understandable eruptions of outright anger at being left behind – at feeling betrayed – without which it would be as shallow as the first pond and so speak to no one.

Instead, this encompasses all of that, on day after disappointing day.

But also it projects forward, so that even the initially reluctant then obdurate brother sees the promise in a new spring ahead.

And. It. Is. Celebrated!

Cathy Fisher pulls no punches during the bleakest days. Those pages are dark and raw and as muddy as the hole in the ground left by Dad’s absence. But they’re still accompanied by the same sense of cocooning – of encircling – which forms a comforting motif throughout: there are hugs and swirling leaves, there’s the looping hosepipe and the pond life framing the family and joining the siblings together when once they were at odds. Finally there’s the finished oval-shaped pond itself, which forms a heart through being bisected by the book’s spine and binding, as the pages rise from its centre. Which is clever.

I don’t think that pond was ever going to be big enough for ducks, but ambition is a beautiful thing.

Is This Guy For Real? The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman (£14-99, FirstSecond) by Box Brown…

“Andy, how come you like the bad guys? They’re mean and they cheat.”
“Yeah… they’re mean… They can get away with anything!”

I first came across Andy Kaufman in the very late seventies in his role as the loveable Latka Gravas in the sitcom Taxi. I remember being fascinated as a very young kid by this oddball character that everybody seemed to like. There was something childlike and otherworldly about the character than instantly made you warm to him. But because Kaufman died so young in 1984, aged 35, I never really knew that much else about him, probably like most people outside of the US, where he was infamous.

In fact, Kaufman became almost universally reviled and disliked in America for his various other appearances on television and his seemingly strange wrestling career that saw him wrestle only women including declaring himself the Women’s World Wrestling Champion. It wasn’t until I watched the Jim Carrey-helmed biopic Man On The Moon from 1999 that the genius of Andy Kaufman started to make some sense. The man wasn’t a madcap comedian in archetypal American sense, he was a performance artist who from a very early age understood that playing the heel, in wrestling parlance, was going to get you a far more visceral response and fervent engagement from the audience, than simply being a nice guy, however talented.

Andy Kaufman took that performance art to such a level with his obnoxious characters, always staying in character whilst in public, that only his very close friends and family knew who he really was, a loveable, gentle man who didn’t drink or do drugs and practiced transcendental meditation every day without fail. Obsessed with Elvis, magic and in particular wrestling from a very young age, he quickly decided he wanted to entertain people, and then set about building his own unique path to stardom.

This work, from a creator who would probably relish in the title oddball himself, Box AN ENTITY OBSERVES ALL THINGS, TETRIS, ANDRE THE GIANT Brown, chronicles the short, spectacular life and career of a man who delighted in being misunderstood and revelled in the rage he could induce in people. It’s a little ironic, therefore, that he probably remains best known by the general public for the one character that everyone did love, Latka Graves, who in emotional terms was the closest Andy came to portraying and revealing any element of himself to the world at large.

When I heard Box Brown was doing this particular autobiography, I wasn’t remotely surprised as he makes no secret of the fact he loves wrestling as much as Andy Kaufman did. In fact this time around Box wanted to explore the make-up of a man who loved fooling people even more. But you don’t remotely have to be a wrestling fan, or indeed even an Andy Kaufman fan to love this work. Knowing practically nothing about him I was utterly engrossed by every aspect of his existence as brought to life by Box. Truly one of the late twentieth century’s strangest stars. As penned by one of the twenty first’s!

I Hear The Sunspot vol 2: Theory Of Happiness (£12-99, One Peace Books) by Yuki Fumino…

Even after finishing I’m not sure! When they talk about a gentle romantic comedy, this is like being oh so teasingly tickled with a feather duster. You don’t know whether you actually like it, but it does feel rather pleasant. Or so they tell me…”

So… after finishing this sequel which, following the smash success of the original manga and its subsequent film adaptation, apparently only came about due to the huge public demand in Japan from people absolutely desperate to know the answers to those questions above… I really can only begin my review of this volume with…

Will they?

Won’t they?

Are they?

Well, I guess you can imagine that all those enchanted members of the public weren’t after an unhappy ending… so you can probably take a good guess at how this mixed-up matter of the heart ends up…

Or maybe not… HAHAHAHA!!

Yes, volume two is just as teasingly, tantalisingly frustrating for all those who are grappling with Kohei and Taichi’s lack of err… grappling… as they continue their “more than friends, less than lovers…” pas de deux routine.

There will be no third volume. I can at least be kind enough to tell you that…!

Meanwhile, Taichi has seemingly grown up somewhat since the last volume and is behaving considerably more like a responsible adult. He’s always had a big heart and now he’s trying to do his best to help more people like Kohei, who despite becoming ever more independent, continues to struggle in the world at large with his profound hearing impairment. In fact, between Taichi’s good works and Kohei’s increasing self-reliance, the friends are spending less and less time in each other’s company. Plus there’s a new friend on the scene…

When they do get a bit of quality time together, once again the hard of hearing Kohei repeatedly fails, or chooses not to see, the subtle yet semaphore-sized romantic signalling of the boisterous, bellowing Taichi, much to Taichi’s agonising dismay. Scene after scene of mildly comedic misunderstandings, unfortunate mishaps and missed / botched opportunities for pronouncing said feelings will practically have you screaming at the page. It’s like being a love-struck incompetent teenager all over again!!

As the two continue to be like ships that pass in the night, one does begin to wonder if their ‘relationship’ will ever find safe harbour or end up dashed on the rocks once and for all. Or even just continue drifting aimlessly on and on without actually ever getting anywhere…? For I did also comment of volume one that I never knew non-romance romance was actually a sub-genre…

“You will be born into an unscientific world…
“…as a woman…
“… come to know war…
“… and be driven to your limits!!!”

No, not a real-life story, but a marvellously complicated piece of fantasy with a couple of salient points to make. But mainly just madcap mayhem.

An obnoxious Japanese salaryman manages to get pushed under a train by someone he’s just taken great delight in making redundant and finds himself, to his surprise, getting admonished by what appears to be God. Being the sort of irritating smartarse he is, he starts talking back to said deity, and then to his even greater shock, gets told he’s going to be reincarnated as a female child soldier in a war torn alternate version of Europe.

Now, Tanya, as he subsequently becomes, does have some magical military abilities, but it’s clearly no picnic of a life for a nine year old. However, applying the same sort of ruthless Machiavellian stratagems and ruthless approach to his, sorry her, new career, as he did to his carving through the rank and file and up the greasy corporate pole, she soon becomes a lauded, decorated war hero with several bloody victories to her name at the front. Despite the fact that what she’s actually trying to do is simply get a safe posting behind the lines. It’s almost like someone has got it in for her…

Meanwhile, it turns out there are several Gods, of all the flavours you would expect. Who are bickering and tinkering away with their various creations behind the scenes, playing games with each other and just generally abusing their omnipotence.

Where it’s all going I have absolutely no idea, but it’s as fun as it sounds daft. Which is very and completely, respectively.

In which we concentrate on the question “Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?”

I’ll tell you what happens when you finish a great story by Neil Gaiman: you go Very Quiet and Very Still. Nothing else happens except in your mind, and perhaps not even there for a few seconds. It needs time to process, to percolate. Shhh…

From the literary magician who can transform a motorcycle manual into something that not only sounds but is profound, comes another story about telling stories and indeed about stories told. Or, as Alan Moore might put it with particular application here, “All stories are true”.

After Lord knows how many fingers tapping on Lord knows how many keys, and so many wrists rendering different shades of pencil, there are so very many tales told about Batman in so many different ways that not all of them join up. How could they? Why even should they? Does it actually matter? The only important thing is that The Batman never gives up: “There’s always something you can do.” He’ll live, he’ll die and he’ll live again in animation on the television, in live action on the silver screen and on the page in prose and in comicbook form: revised, re-envisioned, reinvented.

This is Gaiman and Kubert’s answer to the question of discontinuity, embracing it all in word, in form and in deed. And celebrating it by paying tribute. Kubert’s pencils are glorious, and his ability to mimic Mazzucchelli, Lee, Kane, Adams, McKean et al is stupendous. In addition, can I confess that I guffawed at Two Face’s car?

As the story opens, Batman lies dead in a casket. His friends and adversaries from across the last several decades gather round in the back of the Dew Drop Inn (and you should, you really should) tended by the man who killed Bruce’s parents in Crime Alley.

Each stands up to tell a different story of his demise or recall what the driven dark knight said about life. As they do so, the man they are mourning listens to them closely and watches unseen, unsure of what he is witnessing. Is Bruce dead? And if so, who is his female fellow shade?

“This is Crime Alley.”
“Yes. Very good.”
“But it hasn’t looked like this for sixty years or more. This is crazy… Why are we here?”
“Why? Bruce, you never left.”

The finest pages are most certainly the last, but my secular self very much enjoyed this exchange edited to safeguard your own discovery, summing up exactly why I just don’t care whether or not there is an afterlife. It’s one of the best explanations of and exhortations to altruism that occurs to me right now:

“Are you ready to let it go now? To move on?”
“To go to my final reward? I told you, I don’t believe in –”
“You don’t get Heaven, or Hell. Do you know the only reward you get from being Batman? You get to be Batman.”

“This is where the forgotten spirits wait, hoping that someone finds an old photo and lights a candle for them.
“They smell like the rain. No, like a flood.”

No one has truly died until they’re forgotten.

Their spirits survive in our recollections of how they affected our lives.

Throughout Mexico, families gather to celebrate and remember their immediate loved ones and older ancestors during the Day of the Innocents and the Day of the Dead, so keeping their legacies alive in their hearts and minds.

But some stories slip through the cracks – along with unfinished business – for not everyone leaves a living relative behind to keep that flame alive. Those spirits are restless, those spirits are pained.

Some of us cannot bear to be forgotten.

Emotional investment: do you know what ‘Nenetl’ means?

My second review of our Greentea Publishing comics imported direct from Vera herself is of this complete four-part fantasy which is immaculately structured and ever so satisfying once the true nature of Nena becomes clear, and her remaining ties to this world are disentangled, revealed, both to us and to the tight tale’s young cast. I wasn’t expecting anything quite so clever, but one should never underestimate Vera Greentea.

We first meet Nena in a bustling market square bathed in late-afternoon shadows – already decked out with street-straddling flags and sugar skulls galore – bumped into by tiny Jonah who’s sporting some short-legged, bright orange dungarees. I don’t think I’ve ever typed the word “dungarees” before. There are a lot more collisions to come, and I don’t mean that merely metaphorically. Laura Muller loves drawing multiple “strobe shots” of figures in flight across a single environment, thrusting them forward with a much greater sense of momentum than had they been split between panels. Almost always they are then brought to an abrupt halt, either by themselves on coming to the edge of a rooftop, or by being thumped into by someone else in a hurry. During the first issue alone that happens three times, and it’s very effectively done.

So what’s Jonah carrying? You’ll have to wait for part three. Why’s he in such a rush? Again, see part three! Why is Nena waiting there and where did she come from? I’d suggest patience until the middle of part two – that which takes place several hours earlier. I did promise you clever structure, didn’t I?

So exactly who is our Nena? Ah-hah! The secrets will all eventually out, for now you’ll only learn where she’s heading: an assignation with older Bastian, friend of Jonah, thence an ancestral vault which leads to a catacomb of skulls.

However, have you studied the cover to part one properly? There Nena dances, arms perfectly poised mid-air for balance, her lower leg striding daintily out from under her dress, revealing… Oh.

It’s another of those classic rhombus compositions like Caravaggio’s ‘David With The Head Of Goliath’ (Villa Borghese version), this time using the line of the leg rather than a sword to complete the circuit between hands, arms, head and foot.

And don’t you just love the luminous quality of Nena’s red dress?

Material like that shifts in colour depending on the quality of light falling across it; material like that shifts in colour depending on what lights shines through it, as Nena drops down from the rooftop, her dress fanning out, all seen from below with the sun up above, not transparent but translucent. Then there’s the forward / sideways roll upon landing and, yup, carmine joins the crimson.

Muller will later show you what she can do with blue hues too, both in the candle-lit catacombs and in the graveyard where confident, ambitious Violetta (sister of Eli, all part of the same set of friends as Jonah and Bastian, as tutored by Father Eduardo) makes a terrible mistake in a ceremony whose consequences she doesn’t fully understand.

“The spirits are waiting…”

Oh yes! That, they are!

As with WRAITH, Greentea generously allows her visual storyteller, Muller, to do so much of the immediately obvious fancy work. A less judicious or self-confident author might be tempted to clog up the shape- and colour-driven pages with extraneous dialogue and hideous exposition simply to show that they’re working. Some people get paid by the paragraph, you see. However, when you’re self-publishing and you’ve had the good fortune to secure an artist like Muller on your comic, then it would a crime to clutter it up.

I can assure you that, instead, Vera has set all the tale’s hidden vertebrae into interlocking perfection.

I adore the entire attitude here, deftly delivered with a degree of defiance but also grace, as the young girls’ energy blasts unapologetically from the pages.

At 4” x 12” tall, I also adore the format which, on its first two of sixteen story pages, emphasises the other Winsor McCay elements: the lines, forms, the colours, the traditional rocking horse and the fierce, fantastical imagination of childhood, as well as the rhyme itself.

“Don’t call me a tomboy,
“my name is Lily-Lou,
“I love jumping through the treetops
“and hunting like a Sioux.”

Plus I adore the production values: thick card cover and silky-smooth pages.

The fire has been lit, the stew has been eaten. It’s time for a friendly battle of wits.

“I am greater than a dragon and stronger than a Titan.
“The rich need me. The poor have me.
“And if you eat me, you die.
“What am I?”

Oh no, no, no, you’re going to have to buy the book to find out, but I can honestly say that I have seldom strayed across a more satisfying riddle.

I imagine we’ll be selling this fast-paced fantasy predominantly to adults, but you can also rack this safely next to LUMBERJANES, HILDA and BAD MACHINERY for the most excellent All-Ages adventure. The colours on the cover could not be fresher, while within you fill find rustic town roofs and windows lit like jewels in the night, forests given the most enormous depth with mixed sandy hues in the foreground spotlighted between greens which dominate the furthest stretches before glimpses, between tree trunks, of a blue sky beyond.

The initial, full-page reveal of the citadel which concludes chapter two (after two pages of groping blindly through darkness) is pure Tombraider. Glorious! I don’t mind sending Lara Croft into danger on my behalf.

We open late one evening in a tavern with war-painted, white-tufted Luvander delivering her finishing move with a flourish, winning hands-down at Dragon’s Horde: lots of lovely coinage to scoop up and spend! Ummm… not so much.

“You lousy cheat!”

Ooooh, such a sore loser!

He’s going to be very sore soon – they all are – for when they duff up then corner Luvander she responds with… is that’s dragonfire?! They’re going to need another tavern.

So that’s a mystery for another time. Normally she wouldn’t need it. She’s a nimble as anything, eluding the angry, armed townsfolk at her own leisurely pace with effortless acrobatics, but it does mean she’s back to sleeping in a barrel of smelly onions and down to one copper coin. Oh wait, there’s an urchin who hasn’t eaten for days. Back down to nothing, then.

It matters not, for Luvander is as tireless an optimist as she is an adventurer, forever smitten with a wanderlust which takes her out into the countryside and straight into the middle of a robbery. Instinctively she sides with the victims: Prince Aki, royal bodyguard Koro and Dorma Ironweed, a stocky young dwarf whom they’ve hired as a guide to The Dragon’s Maw. Her grandmother’s recipe for stew is quite spicy.

Prince Aki is only sixteen and embarking on his first quest, as is tradition. He may not match Luvander’s strength or cerebral dexterity, but he too is inextinguishably up-tempo, while Koro is ever suspicious. I suppose it’s her job.

Down they all go into darkness, seeking the Maw’s secrets and perhaps ancient gold. The stone stairs and passageways are littered with skeletons, so they’re not the first by any means. Unfortunately there’s someone hot on Luvander’s heels, and he brings with him two very big dogs. Also: none of them have noticed that there are braziers lit, and presumably kept fuelled…

Terrific stuff, with huge energy and humour, frantic, abyss-edge battles and, how I love a good dream sequence! Lots to try to interpret there: a stained-glass window, chains, padlock, temple ruins, treasure, a young Luvander… and what’s up with her eyes on occasion, anyway?

Perfect h/c (£8-99, Graffeg) by Nicola Davies & Cathy Fisher.

“I loved the little bedroom on the top floor of our pointy house. In summer, swifts nested in the roof above it and I watched their fledglings’ first flights from its window. They were perfect from the very start, soaring high to slice the sky with crescent wings.”

What superbly weighted cadence that final clause carries, darting up twice on “high” and “sky”, suggesting the power, speed and reach of the swifts’ sweeping trajectory, as well as their agile ability to “slice” with energy and precision.

That the fledglings were “perfect from the very start” is equally well worded. First sentences, I’m sure, are far from easy; but as more challenging third sentences go, that is a belter. Everything that follows is informed by it.

You’d be forgiven for thinking – given the manner in which I’ve chosen to introduce this eloquently expressed, profoundly moving and finally uplifting picture book – that you were about to launch into an idyllic memory of childhood delight, inspired by (and a tribute to) the almost inexpressible wonders of nature. You’d be forgiven because you’re not entirely wrong, but this is far more than that.

Cathy Fisher’s illuminations will make your souls soar as high as these birds’ constant, life-long flight; and your heart dip and twist, then beat again, in time to Nicola Davies’ almost impossibly successful evocation of what it can mean for a young child to anticipate the birth of a sibling with whom they long keenly and excitedly to share all things ebullient…

“That’s how it will be, I thought, me and my sister, racing and chasing, screaming with laughter and delight.”

… Only to discover, abruptly, that their newborn brother or sister doesn’t seem so immediately perfect after all.

“I could see that she would never race or chase. She didn’t even scream. Her dark eyes looked at me and she lay quite still.”

Here the air-borne freedom of the swifts lies in stark visual contrast to a baby who is beautiful, cocooned in soft cloth, but seen from behind the bars of her cradle, with wire-like coils of black and white scrawled above, then dragging the whole down into potential darkness.

As she gazes up into sky from the grass which bursts with dappled flecks of gentle summer colour, the older sibling’s initial, outright rejection is expressed with heartfelt regret but a candour which is vital, for this tale is told to “open up the subject of disability for young readers” so that communication can begin.

Where it takes you several pages later, however, after the swifts continue to screech, sweep and circle while the baby sister lies still, is… well, it’s perfect.

The reunification through understanding is inspired by the discovery of fledgling beached, as it were, on the lawn. It lies there, stranded, for swifts are incapable of taking flight except from above.

Clearly, the bird is going to need a helping hand… But that’s all it will take.

I wish I had even more interior art for you here. There’s a close-up against black of the fledgling’s head and winged shoulder, its glistening black eye reflecting the white-clouds and blue sky it yearns for once again, and the face of its new friend. The image is echoed a few pages later, and that one I do have for you, life and love radiating from the soft skin, lips and eyes.

Such immaculate structure!

I’m sorry it took me a couple of years to find this book for you. You may well have already discovered it for yourself. Our primary focus – for which we have more vocation than a monastery full of monks – is on comics and graphic novels, and so is the focus of the solicitations sent to us by our suppliers. But we are equally passionate about all forms of art, especially when created by those who have something important to say and the skills with which to say it. So occasionally I stray upon something new, outside our immediate arena, to add to our burgeoning selection of illustrated prose within our Young Readers already established graphic novel section. For this one, I’m indebted to our dear friend Helena Pielichaty, Page 45 customer, author and passionate patron of reading.

For another all-ages picture book which has something vital to say (albeit in a completely different tone!), please Sarah McIntyre’s THE NEW NEIGHBOURS, reviewed.

Danger and disaster as it happens, for when Susannah discovers a second pair of glasses in her green and pleasant land, it stops being either green or pleasant, but becomes a nightmare terrain of slimy swamps, eerie landscapes full of “hot red clouds”, erupting volcanoes and birds flying backwards, upside down. There follows a frightful but also funny flight through a world turned topsy-turvy, but fortunately she encounters some familiar friends from Moomin Valley in the form of Hemulen, Snufkin, Sniff, Thingummy and Bob, and together, through foul weather, they plough their way back to the sanctuary of home.

I’m informed that this was the last picture book completed by MOOMIN’s Tove Jansson (see also WHO WILL COMFORT TOFFLE etc) and, as before, British poet Sophie Hannah has worked her magic on a literal translation by Silvester Mazzarella to render the most extraordinary thing: a beat-perfect English-language version which manages to replicate the specific, mischievous wit and linguistic prowess of Jansson’s original, and still it rhymes!

In fact it rhymes beautifully. Astonishing, really, especially given Thingummy and Bob’s predilection for swapping bits of words round (clue – they’ve just encountered the volcano):

Shades of Lewis Carroll there, and that last line is particularly clever in retaining “smorld”, for it makes no sense without its earlier accompanying swapsie, yet every sense, encapsulating their entire predicament: a world that’s gone up in smoke.

If this is Jansson’s very last picture book then in some ways she’s come full circle, for MOOMINS AND THE GREAT FLOOD, her first, also featured a fearful journey outside of the safety zone of Moomin Valley as Moominmamma leads Moomintroll through equally unnerving, spooky and potentially dangerous landscapes in search of a lost Moominpappa.

THE DANGEROUS JOURNEY comes with a quite traditional structure: tranquillity enjoyed, tranquillity lost (well, actively rejected) then tranquillity ultimately restored after much penitence and strife, with the unspecified verdant meadows replaced by and upgraded to the tulip blooms of magical Moomin Valley. You’ll note that the visual treatment of the two idylls is markedly different too: the first is serene, sedate, quaint, picturesque – what I might call country cottage – whereas Moomin Valley is a riot of cartoon effervescence.

There’s no further mention of the strange second pair of glasses – they’re not taken off – but the cat’s back, still sleeping soundly, and is treated and greeted with a great deal more appreciation.

Sorry? Yes, belated spoiler warning, possibly, but as with many things it’s very much the journey, not the destination.

Two conventions, one from comics, one from film, both from the same ear. All the faces here have blank eyes, no pupils (think Harold Gray). This tempers the expressions and makes each face (whether bird-like or dog-like) a mask. This is added to the use of (silent) film titles and the characters’ actions (hard) boiled down to archetypes. You’ve got the femme fatale with the two rival suitors, one from the wrong side of the tracks, a disappearing father and hired goons. Very refreshing to see Jason keep the ‘beauty’ drawn in the same style as the rest of the cast. Too many times I see an artist abandon a (for instance) gritty style to up the cheesecake on the dame. Just a pet peeve.

Of You Can’t There From Here [one of my favourite titles to any book — think about it!], Mark wrote:

Two evil henchmen take time off from fetching fresh brains for the evil scientist masters to have lunch in town. While they complain about the hours and the pay there is bedlam and love happening around them. The mad scientist has fallen for the bride of the monster but the monster doesn’t want to give her up. Jason adds a mundane layer to the horror story.

Of The Living And The Dead, Tom wrote:

Second instalment in the Norwegian cartoonist’s horror/comedy trilogy which started with ‘You Can’t Get There From Here’. This time he offers flesh-eating funnies with a George A. Romeo by way of Buster Keaton Zom-Rom-Com. Truly original twist at the end too, but I won’t give that away. This is carried once again by Jason’s intrepid use of timing, each panel perfectly captures the motion and the meaning of each second. Being almost silent – the little dialogue there is interrupts the visuals by stealing its own panel much like a silent film would give a few frames for the same effect – this almost invites you to steam through the action until you’re flying through the pages like a flip-book. More please, sir!

Of Meow Baby, Tom wrote:

Fun, short, mostly silent tales about Jason’s non-specific anthropomorphic versions of Hammer Horror staples Elvis, Godzilla, Godzilla’s mum, The Terminator, a caveman, a ’50s-esque Alien, a lynch-mob and an ice-cream vendor. Difficult to convey just how visually funny these are, but if you’ve read his more sombre tomes such as HEY WAIT, imagine the same heart-rending, understated timing applied to comedy. It’s pitch-perfect.

And of Almost Silent, Stephen wrote:

Classy collection of four silent books previously available separately.

“Battle is a constant, inside and out.
“Reflection is something only found in still waters.”

I do love a double meaning and a deft turn of phrase. I found this to be eminently quotable.

ETERNAL is a juicily drawn, artfully coloured, album-sized graphic novella whose prologue – revisited intermittently – comes framed with great style and class, letting a whole lot of light in. Once we’ve moved passed the cover in Page 45’s Weekly Reviews Blog you are going to want me to stop writing and leave you to drool. I’ll just mention this before I forget: although each page I’ve provided is exquisite in its own right, there are even more gasp-inducing spectacles within from a green-misted morning to a radiant sunset followed three pitch-black pages later by a full-page, crackling, boat-bound pyre that glows in the night.

Sean Phillips and Marc Laming have both ordered copies, and there’s no greater compliment to (and endorsement of) an artist than being purchased by one’s peers.

As to the colouring by Cunniffee, there’s a substantial essay in the back (though sadly no process pieces – you have the line artist on hand for that) about his approach to this and several other projects which should prove very useful to those beginning their studies or commencing their careers. Cunniffee’s use of an overlaid watercolour effect for the skies and the pyre fire alone provide a subtle but strikingly effective contrast to the otherwise untextured colours, as when thick clouds of smoke belch and billow from a fortress destroyed by the shieldmaidens, along with its occupants.

Or so they think.

“When you play with magic, you come across problems.
“When you murder magic, you create problems.”

Some of my sale pitches are more narrative than others (STRANGERS IN PARADISE XXV #1 was almost entirely narrative two weeks ago, but I enjoy telling stories, and here stories sell), others are more analytical. This time I’m going to let the interior art do all of the talking and leave you to unlock the majority of the tale’s trajectory for yourself.

However, we begin with a brief lesson on the pragmatic necessity of violence in a world where, if you do not visit upon others, it will be visited upon you:

“I want to travel, I want to explore. Why must those things come with violence?” asks the young boy.
“They mustn’t, yet, alas, they do. This is merely the reality of things. But if you are the one cutting then you get to decide what’s cut.”

There’s an inarguable wisdom to those words under such circumstances, and our chief protagonist and shieldmaiden Vif will be doing a great deal of slicing and dicing accompanied by inset panels of zoomed-in effect which emphasise the speed of the slashes and thrusts. She is adept.

“It’s not about violence, Grimr…
“It’s about control.”

The problems will arise when she loses it – her self-control – twice.

When she does so the first time, there is a subtle visual clue right at the bottom of the page which merely hints at what she has done. The full, horrific reveal is carefully delayed until you’ve turned over the page, then you see what her rage has wrought.

Anyway, I suspect you may be craving more art. I have it. Go for your life!

“Did you just say you’re a Briggs?
“As in Briggs Land?
“As in those Nazis?”

One of the most terrifying series currently on our shelves, BRIGGS LAND is a riveting read containing no horror other than that which is real to our world: control through intimidation in the form of threats of violence which are always followed through with occasional deliberation but no hesitation whatsoever.

On the flipside it is, at its heart, the struggle of one woman to right decades of male wrong on the vast tracts of land that she so precariously owns. Does she even own it? That, along with her authority, is up for vicious, vitriolic contention.

Most of the women on Briggs Land rarely leave its hundred square miles of privately owned property.

In BRIGGS LAND VOL 1 we learned of one husband who forbade his wife to wear shoes. He took them away so that she wouldn’t stray, even from their household. To call it a patriarchal environment would be the most massive understatement, and if you imagine that its women resent this, then you would be wrong. It is so ingrained, so inculcated, that they believe in it too.

The sole exception is our main protagonist, Jim Briggs’s wife Grace. Not only has she seen the atrocious effects of his lack of empathy for women over these many years, she knows what is coming for her people, fast and furious, if she doesn’t wrench control from her husband right now.

For although Jim Briggs lies in jail, his influence remains at large, potent, infectious and commanding loyalty as fiercely as it always has done, from those who don’t know what he’s up to. What he’s doing is a deal with the Albany D.A. to secure early release by selling off Briggs Land from under everyone’s feet… to the very country from which they originally seceded. Their prison-bound patriarch is their ultimate traitor and – other than Grace – none of them know it.

So here she so resolutely stands, carving out as much command as she can, while under assault from all sides: the media, the FBI, the local police authorities who want the most money and can control access to their very amenities, and her own family. Her husband in particular has Grace aggressively in his sites, and she can’t even trust her eldest son not to misuse their neo-Nazi affiliations to extort what he wants from their former collaborators.

The threats to her life could come from anyone, at any time, and they do.

Breathe out.

Where Woods will surprise you this volume is in presenting a completely different angle.

I don’t know how you view American secessionists, but I imagine the opening quotation comes quite close: open, modern, reasonable and liberal are not going to play high on your hit lists. Nor should they: BRIGGS LAND VOL 1 made that very clear.

Oh, Grace will continue to come under increasing not decreasing threat (and from more quarters still), but Woods presents people as individuals and bigotry from both sides, not only at ground level, but on a socio-political scale too. I wouldn’t expect the writer of LOCAL, NEW YORK FOUR, DEMO. DMZ, STARVE, NORTHLANDERS, BLACK ROAD and more not to be nuanced.

This, from Grace, for a start:

“We didn’t start Briggs Land and invite you in just to see you all turn into addicts and white trash stereotypes.
“We’re supposed to be better.”

Some things can and should be cauterised, but the rot which remains has a way of making its way back home to haunt you. Expect complications.

These include an innocent backpacking couple straying on their land and getting the wrong end of a hidden-boy stick, so necessitating (according to one of Grace’s sons) their confinement. Even if it’s only temporary, their release would prove problematic, especially since they are military helicopters circling overhead, along with the sensation-hungry mass media.

Now, how do you think the male-dominated Briggs Land residents would respond to abortion, eh? Remember, there is an overwhelming sheep and indeed pack mentality in a closed community like this, but there still exists individuals and that’s how Brian Woods renders them.

Rendering them also is the series’ established artist Mack Chater, along with Vanesa R. Del Rey and Werther Dell’Edera plus colourist Lee Loughridge, all at the top of their games, each in their various ways bringing an extra element of palpable, infectious fear to that which unfolds. In both books I’ve found myself constantly watching over shoulders – Grace’s most of all, but here another female family member brave enough to help out a teenager out in her hour of need. Del Rey brings extra textures to the nocturnal excursion, along with worried looks, hunched shoulders and desperate, out-of-breath terror.

Mack Chater is a woefully underrated artist in the vein of Marc Laming, grounding Briggs Land’s inhabitants in the here and now, stinting not once on their environment, be it the private compound with its defiantly displayed, fluttering stars-and-stripes flag or the chain link fences which surround its otherwise most accessible entrances and exits, preventing unwanted intrusion or unauthorised egress. Then there are the old smuggling routes through remote, dense woodland to (and over) the Canadian border, so rich in lush colour thanks to Loughridge and such brittle detail that you can almost hear a twig snap.

Get Naked (£22-99, Image) by Steven T. Seagle & various.

It can be getting your kit off in public, to be sure, but there’s also finding yourself outside of your comfort zone and at the mercy of events you can’t seem to control.

Imagine, for example, finding yourself on the way to catch an international flight which you cannot miss, and pungently smelling of faeces. For no discernible reason. Such is the stuff of nightmares. There, but for the grace of God, go we!

Seagle has had plenty of experience of both vulnerabilities and generously opens himself up for you to have a right laugh at his expense – and a good think. You will learn loads because, surprisingly, this is as much a travelogue as anything else, and it’s all the richer for it.

The co-creator of IT’S A BIRD… and THE RE[A]D DIARY with Teddy Kristiansen has had professional cause to visit countless cities all over the globe where he has observed much to bring you great mirth, including different attitudes to communal nudity when it comes to swimming pools, saunas and showers.

Then there are his first-hand experiences of being naked in public. Not on the street – though there was one notable exception in Helsinki where out of necessity he found himself spread-eagled, starkers, like a starfish in the snow – but in places where most of us would naturally expect to strip… except, he informs us, in the US of A:

“[This] may seem obvious to non-Americans, but I can assure you that in the U.S.A., most pool-goers shower in their swimming suits, so as not to have to get naked.”

Good grief! And I thought the British were self-conscious prudes.

Put into the eye-opening context of America’s full-throttle recent retreat from nudity (as late as the ‘70s, during gender-segregated swimming sessions at some high schools, swimming naked for boys was mandatory), this is a personal journey through personal journeys of one man emerging into a healthy equanimity with removing his clothes from after a lifetime of crippling embarrassment when it came to his body on account of considering himself physically inferior, almost translucently pale and skinny.

For Steven it began with a girl – of course it did! – a girl whom he fancied at school. She called him “cute”, constantly, and he took it as a huge compliment… until the day on which he discovered that she was referring to his lack of muscular, manly development, and she made a big show of it in front of her friends.

It’s then that t-shirts and shorts were abandoned for decades, even in the sweatiest of weather, in favour of maximum length and multiple layers.

Recovering from this was a gradual progress that began, improbably enough, during one memorable experience at a tiny comicbook convention in Alicante. It doesn’t seem the most likely venue to be forced out of your clothes in front of others, does it? Nevertheless, that is what happens, but not on stage. The trauma begins with a friendly football match, the prospect of which was trauma enough for Steven who had no faith in his athletic prowess, nor the slightest comprehension of soccer rules. And I know what you may be thinking: “Oh come on, it’s only a game!” But I still have regular nightmares of being forced on stage without having even read the play in the first place, let alone memorised its lines. It’s exactly the same thing, and Seagle is ever so adept at placing you squarely in his emotional, short-coming shoes.

The break-through began when he bit the bullet of this post-match, communal shower and in full fear of being judged physically by those much buffer than himself. He found that he was not. Not one jot. No one was remotely interested.

Flipping backwards and forwards in time, the writer than expands on his liberation from self-stifling anxiety, not to a whey-hey get-it-all-out exhortation towards exhibitionism but to a realisation that this and his other fears surrounding nudity proved to be completely ill-founded. He’s equally eloquent and candid about all that. There’s even a personal, circumstantial-evidence poll about what his straight friends and his gay friends say they fear most about showering with other men. It does make perfect sense.

Now, I began this casual assessment by proclaiming that this collection of essays harboured far more than a catalogue of bath-house experiences, yet that is what I’ve appeared to fixate upon. I promise you that I wasn’t kidding.

Sometimes the naked bits feel like more of an excuse for other even more interesting anecdotes with which he’ll regale you in full – like Seagle’s complete inability to recognise the film-famous out of their celluloid context – but instances of skin-bearing actually act as an editor of sorts, confining what is, I suspect, a five-fold treasure-trove of additional stories to a later collection. “If it doesn’t involve stripping, then I can’t even go there.”

Yet.

Each essay is illustrated by an artist whom you’ll grow so comfortable with that their successor will prove quite the surprise and delight. Some bring you something close to comics, others will deliver a more prose-and-illustration effect. One will cram your cranium full of yearning to visit the old / new majesty of Tallinn, newly freed from Soviet occupation. Now therein lies a sense of historical perspective!

Another will make you shudder as you embark on an ill-advised excursion into Karlovy Vary which you’ll wish Seagle had shied well away from. Seagle too! It’s so dank and darkly illustrated that you might fear you were straying into the latest hostel movie. Brrrrr…

As to why, after his flight out of Barcelona, he – and he alone – was bundled out of the plane in Munich by shouting, armed guards…

So many of my favourite pages, however, are the chapter introductions / interludes by Emel Olivia Burell. They are majestic, and I’ve a fair few for you here!

Godshaper s/c (£17-99, Boom!) by Si Spurrier & Jonas Goonface.

One of the things I love most about Simon Spurrier’s creator-owned work is that on top of all the lateral thinking that he pours into its premise, he doesn’t let it lie there: there’s also the language which is far from flippant but instead – like Rob Davis’ THE MOTHERLESS OVEN and THE CAN OPENER’S DAUGHTER – comes with carefully thought-out connotations.

Here Jonas Goonface too goes that extra mile with lithe illustrations reflecting physical prowess and creative endeavour, leaving you much to infer from what they silently depict down the bar (none of which is clumsily and unnecessarily sign-posted by Spurrier) while adding, here and there, subtly highlighted details like this visual rebuttal to an idiot all too fond of the sound of his own ignorant voice:

“Man’s gotta be a martyr to fashion these days, wants to get anywhere.
“Sometimes I wonder if you poor schmoos got it easier, huh? No god, no money, no style….
“You know the first thing about fashion, Shaper?”

The staid, self-regarding, disregarding, pot-bellied, barrage-balloon of a man has failed to do more than glance at the man – from behind – who is currently restyling his god with some considerable artistic skill and who is the very epitome of understated dapper in gloves, rolled sleeves, braces over a well-starched shirt, a quiff fashioned topiary-like from dense hair above chic, shaved sides and – to the fore so that the reader’s eye cannot miss it on the bottom of the left-hand panel – a single and small diamond ear stud.

Now that is attention to detail.

God is in the detail and the detail has most certainly been injected into this title’s gods.

This is a world in which everyone has a god of their own, and every god has a person.

It just so happens that they treat their gods like employees or slaves, and their gods are the equivalent of personal bank accounts and/or RPG video-game characters, both of which we long to upgrade as much and as often as we can.

All transactions are conducted via these gods: the series’ sole currency lies in these powerful upgrades. What do we worship more than money and power? They’re basically the same thing, right?

There are, however, some singular individuals born without gods.

They are regarded as “nogodies”.

In this society – as in ours – they are treated as outcasts: the poor. For without a god they can neither acquire nor accrue money. They can never own a home for they have no money (and certainly no access to a mortgage without that bank account), so they are itinerants forever shunned but desperately needed for labour – for their unique ability to refashion everyone else’s gods. They are called Shapers.

The first but by no means last Shaper we meet is called Ennay, he of the braces and diamond ear stud, and the way he’s treated by our first customer – told to exit via the back door lest he be seen, for example – says it all.

He is, however, a bit of a hit on the cantik scene, which is akin to rockabilly and played unplugged, without a god.

“No holy harmonies here. No superpower pop. No gods as guitars. We don’t get aaawwwwf on that godly groove.
“We got a new manifesto. We’re here to repair the square.
“What we play, we play with our mouths and our hands and our hearts.
“This is cantik.
“It cannot be stopped.”

Ennay throws himself into the music, and the colours and the crowd go wild.

After which the spotlights go down, leaving a fluid double-page spread bathed in blue and purple neon as Ennay works the floor between tables, taking his credit and receiving his dues. He’s definitely an equal opportunities kind of a guy.

It’s a spectacular piece of fluid figure work and colouring, tracing Ennay’s movements and his admirers in a serpentine path of purple and pink between the rest of the onlookers in indigo, while their cartoon-animal, ghostly gods are lit in bright blue, their outlines an ethereal white.

Which brings us to Ennay’s second secret: he does have a god called Buddy. It’s just not his.

“Weird. Can’t see its believer.”

Gods aren’t supposed to exist without believers. Without believers they’re supposed to fade away (see SANDMAN / AMERICAN GODS). So what on earth is up with Buddy?

Once the subplot involving war and “riff-raff rations” kicks in, the relationship between gods and their owners is explored a little further and grows far darker than you’ll be anticipating.

Let’s just say that we all know the pain when our bank account’s drained but what if our bank account was a sentient god / ghost / animal?

So what else lies in store? Peggy Slim, queen of Synthpop Soul: her gigs fill stadiums, while her god has grown big enough to act as her entire stage set, such are the rewards she reaps. She’s married – very happily married – but this union harbours a secret. And what of good ol’ fashioned organised religion in this world of personal deities? Oh, same old, same old, hate-mongering as usual.

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

– Abel Meeropol, ‘Strange Fruit’

“That’s one thing that most of us know that most white folks don’t. That race doesn’t really exist. Culture? Ethnicity? Sure. Class too. But race is just a bunch of rules meant to keep us on the bottom. Race is a strategy. The rest is just people acting.”

Zane Pitchback is an actor, and a consummate actor at that. He has to be. His job as a black journalist is to pass himself off as white, to travel south then infiltrate and report on the hanging of black men by white supremacists. This is a fiction, but it is a fact that “between 1889 and 1918 2,522 negroes were murdered by lynch mobs in America. That we know of.” And for the local people, it would be a gay family outing, including women and their children having their photographs taken as keep-sakes for the day in front of their dangling, humiliated and mutilated human trophies. By the 1930s it was no longer even considered news, but some extraordinarily brave individuals fought to make it news and expose the culprits by “going Incognegro”.

As the book kicks off Zane is posing as a photographer’s assistant at one such publicly perpetrated and community-supported murder, taking down names and addresses for free photographs, but his cover for once is blown and he barely escapes with his life. Unfortunately he’s been clocked. Returning to New York City, he’s determined now to exchange his anonymity for a little local recognition and a job as managing editor of the paper he writes for. He’s surely deserved it. But there’s one fresh file he cannot ignore: a report from Tupelo Mississippi of another young black man arrested and jailed for the murder of a white woman he was seeing and shared a moonshine operation with. The man is Zane’s brother.

This time it’s not enough to witness the almost certain lynching; this time Zane has to thwart it, and clear his brother’s name in the eyes of local population blind to such trivialities as truth or culpability, and policed by those who’d rather not start causing ripples by resisting the baying for blood. Unfortunately Zane’s city friend Carl, smarting from the jibes of his girlfriend, is determined to prove himself Zane’s equal by accompanying him on his mission, and with his brash behaviour and ham British accent he breaks one of the cardinal rules of undercover operations: keeping a low profile.

All of this would be gripping enough, but there’s a much wider mystery here: it’s a “who really dunnit?” for the murder itself is far from what it seems, there are several instances of mistaken identity, and there’s much to come out about the missing deputy, Francis Jefferson-White – it won’t be what you expect.

The work is substantial in length and substantial in depth with plenty to say about race and society both present and past (if it truly is). It’s also Pleece’s finest moment so far, particularly in his eloquently expressive faces, but also his use of light and shadow, either under sunlight or beside firelight. In spite of the new grey tones (all bar three pieces of interior art here are from the original edition), there’s a starkness and intensity which befits the exceptionally dire circumstances.

Anti-Gone (£12-99, Koyama Press) by Connor Willumsen…

“Order a weird art-house comic, get a weird art-house comic.”

– Page 45 customer.

It is hard to disagree with that sentiment. Particularly meant in the positive sense, as it was. But then buy something from Koyama Press, and, well, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to get something that will test your artistic sensibilities, and possibly even your sanity, like recent work CRAWL SPACE by Jesse Jacobs did. It’s a graphic novel that we seriously considered making a Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month but we just couldn’t get hold of enough copies.

This is actually weirder than that – which is saying something, trust me. But then this material was actually drawn on tracing paper for starters, something which Koyama Press have done their darndest to recreate in terms of paper stock, at probably not inconsiderable cost to themselves. Apparently the creator Connor Willumsen wanted to see what his creation looked like from both sides, which is very artistically diplomatic of him.

You can see where he has used what I assume is tippex for colouring or speech bubbles on the panels that are of a darker hued background. There’s a sequence that particularly stuck with me of a skunk and a man in a puffer jacket covered in capital Rs ascending some sort of stepped Mayan pyramid to arrive at what looks like a drawing table with a mysterious box just waiting there. Which is in fact a dream sequence that occurs during a trance induced in a cinema foyer… Which…

So what’s it really all about? Well, I’m actually going to cheat and quote the first paragraph from Koyama Press’ own blurb because I’m not sure I can describe something so resolutely abstruse and recondite as well as they do. And because there’s only actually about another three of you who will be remotely interested in buying this, as brilliant as it is, and Page 45’s impending refit is fast approaching. Time, as they say in the Twilight Zone, is a one-way street.

“Reality’s grip is loosened as Spyda and Lynxa explore a potentially constructed environment that shifts between dystopic future and constructed virtual present. Like a form of multistable perceptual phenomena, Anti-Gone exists in ambiguity.”

Okay, I probably should at least try. It’s a wee bit like some of Dash Shaw’s more out there material such as THE UNCLOTHED MAN IN THE 35TH CENTURY A.D. but not as finely polished, though that’s entirely because Connor Willumsen is doing his own thing exactly as he’s intended. However, it’s assuredly artistically worthy in its own right and absolutely deserving of attention. It’s big, bold ambitious comics, which I love, and if I think you like a bit of weird yourself don’t be surprised if I make you try to buy it the next time you’re passing the till…

I’ll leave you with a random line from one of his characters that sums Connor’s approach up perfectly…

Parker: Slayground s/c (£15-99, IDW) by Richard Stark & Darwyn Cooke…

“Good. It’s real simple. Do what I tell you and you’ll live through this. You understand me?”

No, not new recruit Jodie being inducted into the dark arts of Page 45 mail order, but Parker dispensing a pearl of choice wisdom to the bent cop he’s trying his very hardest to be civil to. Given the cop and his partner are doing their level best to help a crew of mob guys rub him out and steal his score, I’d say he’s being pretty darn considerate. For a master criminal, Parker certainly manages to get himself into a fair few tight spots, but I guess if everything went to plan, that’d be pretty boring.

Here, hot footing it from the scene of an armoured car heist after a nervous getaway driver has managed to roll their car in the snowy conditions, he’s spotted leaping the fence into a locked up fairground by a couple of on the take cops picking up their pay-off from some local wise guys. Hearing reports coming in of the heist over the police radio and putting two and two together, the bad guys decide there’s some easy money to be had and posse up with the intention of relieving Parker of his cash. Unfortunately for them, well, he’s Parker. So, after surveying his surroundings, planning as many moves ahead as a chess grandmaster, including laying some ingenious booby traps, surely only an easy mark would bet against him walking out through the fairground gates with his swag.

Another excellent adaptation of a classic Richard Stark novel, Darwyn Cooke again brings our favourite tough guy to life in his own inimitable pulpy, period style. This time around the locale is the rather less glamorous Buffalo, New York, though we do once again open up with the now requisite, scene-setting two-page landscape splash. As ever, amidst the gala of glorious art on display, there’s a unique little conceit and this time around it’s a fold-out map, in a few different art styles of course, of the fairground itself.

Darwyn Cooke truly is a master of his craft, there’s so much stylistically to admire here, so much background detail, so many clever devices. It’s not often I really enjoy breaking down someone’s work, understanding how every panel and page are put together, every bit of space used for maximum effect, but if you take the time to read this work a second or third time and do so, you’ll realise it’s an absolute masterclass in how to graphically portray a dramatic, action-packed story, it truly, truly is. Marvellous work, and only succeeds in taking my appreciation of his abilities to even higher levels.

My only criticism, and it’s a very reluctant one, is SLAYGROUND feels a touch lightweight in plot compared to the previous three PARKER capers. It all seemed over too soon, and whilst the end pages promise Parker will return in 2015, even despite the additional short story thrown in for good measure after the main event, that seems far too far away right now. I’d been looking forward to this for ages and now the wait begins anew. Ah well, maybe I’ll just read this one more time…

Grisly, pulp tale set in 1920s New York and various other locales including a desert island. The head of the special investigative unit the UPI has been murdered in a particularly gruesome manner, and it falls upon John Lord to track down his mentor’s killer. There’s a pretty sophisticated plot which commences with the simultaneously telling of two separate tales, that of John Lord’s return to the Big Apple from the front after a spell in the forces, an appearance that seems to provoke an ambivalent response in pretty much everyone, and that of a group of castaways, marooned on an island after a rather brutal act of piracy.

This second tale, entirely wordless, would appear to reveal all about the identity of the murderer almost immediately, or is it in fact just a very clever red herring? I shall say no more!

The art is also most definitely up to the usual high standards of a Humanoids imprint release. Yet another highly recommended crime release! If you read and enjoyed THE BOMBYCE NETWORK, this will also appeal.

Yes, our first 100 copies of either hardcover or softcover come with a free, signed bookplate designed by Sarah McIntyre exclusively for Page 45!

We could not be more grateful or proud.

Not only has Page 45 long been in love with Sarah McIntyre’s exuberant and kind-hearted craft, but here she delivers a big fluffy bundle of witty, exuberant joy for Young Readers which also wraps its warm heart around the welcoming of strangers, whoever they are and from wherever they’ve roamed.

Look, there’s a welcoming mat on the cover for just such a purpose as Sarah invites you in for tea, cake, and quite the cacophony! It’s going to grow ever so riotous inside, and the stairs are going to take quite the thumping. I love that the carrier pigeon which breaks the big news is dressed like the landed gentry who shoot grouse!

“Guess what!” shouted Piper.
“We have RATS in our flats!”

They really do! And Piper is beyond all containment.

Oh how the young bunnies bounce around any and all flats which open their doors to their din!

“RATS!
“We’ve got RATS!”
“WAHEY!
“YIPPEE!”

Brick towers tumble, a game of draughts is disabled and someone’s stuffed their head right into an upturned saucepan full of spaghetti. You can’t really blame them.

Their elder sister Lettuce is the first they encounter. She considers this development and responds with that which is right:

“I don’t think rats are very tidy neighbours. We need to make sure they keep the place clean. Let’s gather everyone in the building and figure out what to do.”

And that seems okaaaaaay… But without giving too much awaaaaaay…

This is the crossroads. This is where excitement, enthusiasm and inquisitiveness begin to descend from “I don’t think” and “I am not sure” into accumulated, ill-informed gossip.

Each successive floor reveals itself to be inhabited by animals from all over the globe – like polar bears and great big buffalo bison – and they are all adored by each other now that they are established neighbours. But what of the brand-new, whose put-about reputation precedes them?! First rats are untidy, then they are dirty, then they are stinky and finally they supposedly steal!

The stairs become more crowded, dingier then darker as what began as a welcoming rush turns into a veritable lynch mob, and each time McIntyre adds a new verb until…

“Everyone HOPPED and TROTTED and TOTTERED and PADDED and CLATTERED downstairs…”

… And lastly they tumble, tripped up by their own unnecessary panic, into one chaotic heap on the floor.

But who’s going to knock on the door? No one dares!

Now, I’ve given far more away than I would ordinarily within any review, but my guess is that there are very few Young Readers who’ll be reading our blog themselves, so all the secrets will stay surprises for those with wide eyes who will read or be read to. Oh, how this demands to be read aloud like all Reeve & McIntyre books! I adore doing exactly that on Page 45’s shop floor, when I present families with any of our Young Readers illustrated books and graphic novels.

I will leave the final reveal to Sarah, but you can rest assured that there will be much contrite and sticky egg on many embarrassed faces.

Sarah is an immigrant herself, you see, from America, so understands how important it is that we all embrace each other’s individuality with open arms.

Before we wind up, there is so much more to recommend this on a visual level. McIntyre has eschewed her usual strident pen lines and primary colours for softer watercolour pencils which are fabulous for bunny fur – but also for a more comforting feel throughout – along with pastel shades (and indeed pastel textures here and there) for a more carefully controlled atmosphere which, as I’ve said, subtly shifts as events take their course. Wait – no, they don’t! I mean, as the characters’ trajectory is dictated by their own over-anxious hand-wringing then mutually amplified, increasingly thought-free sensationalism.

There is enormous energy on every page which propels readers through the story while those who would linger will relish exquisite background details like the pigs proclaiming rats to be messy while their own pots and pans pile up in the sink, unwashed.

I loved all the wallpaper and ‘70s decor. It speaks of the safe, comforting and homely. It also says everything about renting accommodation, and not having enough dosh to redecorate – clever!

There is also a wonderful sense of shared community here and a rich harmony which will be restored. You can sense the rejuvenation of spirits on the penultimate double-page spread where (once again, like the opening rooftop) you can see the light from outside flooding in.

The funny thing is that creators – writers, artists and illustrators – like Sarah McIntyre will have taken months thinking all these things through, weeks structuring the whole, and days deploying their skills on these ideas and each individual page… and we, the readers, simply tear straight through them in nano-seconds because we cannot help but desperately crave reading what happens next! It’s their own fault, of course. If these authors weren’t so good at what they do, then we wouldn’t give a tinker’s cuss.

Marcy And The Riddle Of The Sphinx h/c (£12-99, Flying Eye) by Joe Todd-Stanton…

“Every evening, Marcy loved to listen to the tales of her father’s adventures. She never quite believed him… After all, he was very old and far too portly.
“But at night, everything changed. The creatures from her father’s amazing tales turned into terrifying monsters in the shadows. Marcy felt utterly lost and alone in the dark. All she could do was close her eyes tight and wait for sunrise.”

Yes! After reading all about the adventures of Marcy’s dad, when he was just a slim whippersnapper himself in the fabulous ARTHUR AND THE GOLDEN ROPE I can state two things with certainty. Firstly, I can vouch that he was indeed a formidable hero and secondly, that I was desperately hoping for more of the family Brownstone from Joe Todd-Stanton!

Once again, this time narrating from the splendour of the Brownstone family’s observatory, complete with a kaleidoscopically coloured telescope and a gigantic clockwork mobile of a galaxy spinning away merrily, the elder bearded Brownstone of the modern era has returned to reprise his introductory preamble to another member of his adventurous ancestors.

Before too long Marcy is plunged into a death-defying adventure of her own that will see her gamely battle ancient Gods in dusty Egypt for high stakes indeed. But first we see the replete, grey-bearded Arthur, complete with eye patch, attempting to take Marcy on her first gentle adventurous excursion into a cave, to surprise her by meeting the benevolent King of the Water Spirits, who looks like a sort of free-floating giant waterfall complete with beatific smile and a tiny crown.

However, upon reaching the entrance, surrounded by spooky shadows that look very much like the ones that plague her bedroom ceiling at night, little Marcy is frozen with fear and unable to proceed any further… But when Arthur disappears off on an errand to find a mysterious book and doesn’t return, Marcy decides she’s brave enough to head off after him to save the day. After all, in her eyes, her dad has trouble just bending over when he’s dropped his glasses!

Donning the cap Arthur always told her would summon the mighty bird Wind Weaver, more in hope than belief, Marcy is delighted to see the giant red-feathered friend waiting to whisk her away to lands far, far away in search of her father. And so, her first adventure truly begins! She’s going to encounter dangerous deities bent on world domination, stowaway on a flying boat floating through stunning night skies, brave terrible traps in subterranean, stygian depths, and of course, get to play a round of riddle-me-ree with the mysterious Sphinx itself!! But can Marcy manage to conquer her fear of the dark to rescue her dad…?

Of course she can!!

What a triumphant follow-up to the brilliant ARTHUR AND THE GOLDEN ROPE this is! This has all the attention to detail in the exquisite art and madcap mayhem in its plotting that made its predecessor so swoon-worthy and gallantly gripping in my eyes. Once again, reading with Whackers, little fingers continually stopped me from turning the pages so she could take in each page in all its glorious detail, spotting hidden delights and tracing trails of potential doom narrowly avoided!

I can only add I’m already avidly awaiting the next instalment of the epic endeavours of the brave Brownstone brood!

I was always going to review this one first because, what a cover! An immaculate composition using the late autumn silver birch trees with their very last leaves to frame a remote country mansion which is in need of considerable renovation, so proving the perfect home for foxes, racoons, magpies and mice and the most exotic squirrels the world will ever see.

I think they’re squirrels. One of their families has cross-bred with a Siamese cat, the other is anyone’s guess – but, oh my, they’re gorgeous! The former is Pan, the latter is Wraith who’s not been a part of their cosy community for a while now.

“Humans came to her previous home and killed her entire family… using food.”

Using food!

The fox is called Frida and she too boasts the bushiest of tails and ever such glossy, well-washed fur.

Within the abandoned home, still fully furnished, some of the plaster has cracked and come down, and the odd weed have taken root, but nests have been built and there’s still the odd thing to forage. Just as a gentle mist hangs low outside, so the inside is suffused in soft, floating light and shadow.

ELK’s forms are lithe and the animals acrobatic, but are they up to defending their home from human beings when determined? A little lateral thinking may be required.

Greentea generously gives ELK all the room required to both charm and alarm the reader: a self-contained story like this could so easily be overwritten when what we want most is to bathe in its beauty. Instead we are shown all that we need to know, like the alarming arrival of very large lorries, wending their way through the scrubland.

Coming back to the cover, it sang to me of my childhood: of William Backhouse’s endpapers to Jane Shaw’s retelling of Joel Chandler Harris’s ‘Uncle Remus Stories’.

These were read to me by an Aunt who wasn’t an Aunt, but a nurse from Northern Ireland and I’m so sorry she never read to you, because her accent was everything.

Second of sevenCOURTNEY CRUMRIN volumes to receive the softcover treatment, it’s one of my favourites which will rob you once and for all of the illusion that every Young Adult book necessarily comes with a cosy conclusion. I should also emphasise that this series is equally treasured by Old Adults alike: hello!

Courtney Crumrin desperately needs help to save the innocent faun-like Skarrow from summary execution at the hands of The Coven Of Mystics. That information may rest in the shadows of Radley Hall and the mind of dead demon Tommy Rawhead. But how to get in? Leave it to mystic moggie and actual cat burglar Tobermory – he’s getting intruder window.

“As ray of moonlight passes glass, so shall Tobermory pass.
“Take a note, Miss Crumrin. It’s much simpler to trick a spell than to break it.”

Young Courtney Crumrin will be taking a lot of notes here about how the world works around her: it’s full of self-interest and hate in the human heart. For those in love, the worst sin is silence, inaction the absolute killer. The good news is that Courtney and silence are far from synonymous, but will she be listened to in time?

Love, love, love this series, now in full colour. Ted Naifeh’s moonlit Council of Cats is like Kelley Jones’ equivalent work in SANDMAN: DREAM COUNTRY after an infusion of Mike Mignola and a wide- and shiny-eyed dose of his own design flair for a Crumrin transformed into cat.

That which she finds sheltering in fear from two arcane archers is quite magical and long been the stuff of my dreams. Naifeh does soft, sleek and otherworldly to perfection; his monsters are hideously twisted. He is exceptional at making you believe in impossibly large things lurking in improbably small cabinets, like the next one you’ll foolishly open.

Following COURTNEY CRUMRIN VOL 1, this finds our belligerent young lady in her second year at school and under close supervision from Ms Crisp, a teacher with close ties to Uncle Aloysius but who understands that isolating yourself from the real world comes at a cost. That is a lesson which will be most painfully learned by all.

A demon has been summoned which dispatches whole families. A curse has been placed on witch Madam Harker, rendering spoken words into a cascade of frogs. When she tries to write, her hands become wriggling serpents. Someone is silencing all and sundry, while a mute woodland creature called Skarrow seeks sanctuary in Uncle Aloysius’s once well respected domain. Instead the villagers move in, their metaphorical pitchforks in danger of becoming cold steel. What under earth is going on?!

It’s time to convene the Coven Of Mystics, the council by whom all will abide. Wrap up warm, my lovelies; because I’m afraid it’s about to grow chilly.

Sketches From A Nameless Land – The Arrival Companion (£14-99, Lothian) by Shaun Tan.

“Who was I, in this place?
“Everything and nothing.”

From a spread of notes taken by Tan from interviews and biographies in which migrants spoke about their lives, embellished with the sketches they inspired.

“Often, the most difficult experiences were described by migrants in a very concise, understated way, partly because of poor English skills, but also due to the more general inadequacy of language to convey complex feelings and impressions.”

It’s one of the many reasons why the final graphic novel is silent, using instead the universal language of pictures whose tones are transformed according to the emotional highs and lows of its protagonists.

Shaun Tan’s THE ARRIVAL has to be one of the most beloved books at Page 45, bought then bought again as its readers are inspired, galvanised into spreading its empathy towards those most in need of understanding and help, but who are often the most ostracised and even vilified by the right-wing press, opportunist politicians, and the thoughtless, with hate in their hearts.

This is the story of the graphic novel’s evolution then construction, full of preliminary art and process pieces, photographs of friends posing for pictures etc which Shaun reproduces with extensive explanations or brief annotations, like the Registry Room or ‘Great Hall’ at Ellis Island in America circa 1907-1912, through which each new arrival had to pass in order to enter the country.

“Here, I tried to amplify the subtle ‘poetry’ of the original image: the huddled darkness of massed people, the bench-lines receding towards a flag in the centre (a strange symbol of authority and freedom) and the protective embrace of the cathedral-like vaulting. The over-exposure of the upper-storey window suggests a land of luminous opportunity just beyond the gates.”

In his final piece Shaun replaces the blinding light with vast, distant towers from which those who have been accepted – after intrusive inspections by military surgeons – are dispersed in balloons. In place of the flag hangs a gigantic sign in a fictional language indecipherable both to the book’s readers and those queuing for admission. So it is that throughout we walk these miles in their shoes. Later on Tan will demonstrate the construction of this script from a rearrangement of Roman letters and numbers using scissors and transparent tape.

Of his choice to use a shadowy serpent coiling round bleak, dilapidated housing in the asylum-seeker’s homeland, Shaun suggests it was “an ideal metaphor for many unspoken fears: political oppression, religious persecution and even ecological collapse. At the same time, they escape such specific interpretation, and I think that is the most important thing in illustration: that an image feels truthful beyond any explanation.”

For someone who’s fashioned a career largely from silent, pictorial narratives, Shaun Tan is ever so eloquent, as anyone who’s read his TALES FROM OUTER SUBURBIA, BIRD KING art book and THE SINGING BONES, inspired by the Brothers Grimm. He writes about his own complex international heritage, and this made me sit up and think because, when one casts one’s mind over the creator’s catalogue, it rings perfectly true:

“Consciously or otherwise, I’ve always been attracted to stories about characters who find themselves lost, displaced, in an unfamiliar world, or experiencing some other troubled sense of belonging.”

Ever since when we’ve been planning this physical restructure – a complete regeneration which will be sharper, sleeker and even more chic – so that more graphic novels can be displayed face-front on our ground floor, and lit like radiant stars.

Because TBH our lighting has always been shocking.

Page 45 Will Remain Open Throughout Refit In Two New Locations

There will be no pause in service: not one single day.

That is vital, for you cannot forego your regular, hallowed comics fix!

New Comics Day will remain Wednesdays.
Restocks will arrive 5 times a week as always.
There will be no break in your Page 45 Standing Orders, their immediate dispatch worldwide via www.page45.com or their availability to you for collection.

How will we do this? Because, best beloveds, we have prepared!

Here are your omelettes and eggs, whisked up already and about to hit our frying pan…

Dates Of Disruption: Commencing Monday 19th February

Page 45 will trade as normal until 4pm Sunday 18th February at which point the original shop floor will vanish forever in its entirely.

Please flock along before then to buy lots of books and take commemorative photos! I certainly have!

Page 45 will reopen the very next morning at 9am, on Monday 19th February in the ground-floor unit immediately to our right of where we are now.

Page 45 will then also reopen upstairs through new a door to our left on Thursday 22nd February once those new stairs and door have been built. Hey, it’s takes three days!

So as well as being open worldwide at www.page45.com, that’s two temporary trading locations for three and a half weeks. Wheelchair users, please see FAQ below: upstairs is temporary!

Date Of Discovery: Friday 16th March

Page 45 will finally reopen in full, blazing glory on Friday 16th March 2018 at our current ground-floor location of 9 Market Street with every single fitting brand-new.

Or a little earlier if we can.

Hooray!

We Need Your Help!

I won’t lie to you: there are risks involved.

During the transition period we will be vulnerable to: a) people suspecting we’ve closed for good, in spite of all our signage, b) I don’t know – going bankrupt…? We must keep making money, please!

Please spread news of this blog as widely as possibly. That is me publically begging for retweets, tweets of your own and Bookface postings, linking to this blog, the most important that I’ve ever written. Why not pop along to Instagram our extemporised action, and join in our wartime spirit!

Also, if we may, an immediate small call to alms (arf!): if there’s a graphic novel or two that you’ve been meaning to buy, either for yourself or someone else, why not pop along to www.page45.com and purchase it right now, either for shipping or collection in store. That would be incredibly helpful and extremely generous of you. Thanks!

Please visit now, before our move on February 18th and buy all the comics! That way Jonathan and I will have to carry fewer crates upstairs and next door on Sunday night. We’ll be evacuating everything that’s on our shop floor! *cries*

Watch This Space!

As soon as we begin this renovation, then we will start posting photos of extreme farce on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @pagefortyfive.

It’s a big story, right…? And your future’s involved!

Will we reopen in time…? I do not know!

Twitter hashtag already in use: #Page45Evolution

FAQs

How much are you spending? £50,000

Why? To make comics look even more attractive than they already are to brand-new, potentially life-long readers, as well as loyal veterans like you!

Are all these dates guaranteed? No, but we’ve planned extensively for two whole years and given ourselves a little wiggle room on top.

Don’t you feel awful that only half of your comics will be easily accessible to those in wheelchairs for 3 whole weeks? No. Folks, it’ll be 3 short weeks versus my personal, career-long commitment to access for all, ever since I first drew up the Page 45 Business Plan 24 years ago. Other shops would have opened upstairs or downstairs years ago. We never will. Our upstairs floor is only temporary and will close as soon as our ground floor reopens.

Wheelchair users: For three weeks, please sweep into our temporary ground-floor location and we will arrange to have whatever you need from upstairs brought down, even if you just want to browse through it: no pressure to buy anything at all.

This section may well expand depending on what I’m asked, post-publication, on Twitter!

Credit Where It Is Due:

When we crawl from this wreckage, gasping for air then gawping at the sheer majesty of the new, evolved Page 45, please remember that it was meticulously researched, planned and designed in its entirely by our very own Jonathan Rigby, co-owner and co-manager of Page 45, with Colombian architect Julie Waldron who created the 3-D model from which I’ve taken screenshots for you.

All I had to was watch, listen and learn, before signing off almost instantly, because each individual element of this new design is an exceptional improvement completely in keeping with the long-term goals and aesthetics of Page 45.

If in any doubt, I would remind you that it was our Jonathan – alongside Random River’s Chris Dicken – who gave us Page 45’s international website www.page45.com which Kieron Gillen of THE WICKED + THE DIVINE memorably described on its launch as “crushworthy”.

This too will be the most monumental upgrade. I’ve only shown you bare bones of the beauty so far.